St. Lucy

A virgin and martyr of Syracuse in Sicily, whose feast is celebrated by
Latins and Greeks alike on 13 Dec. According to the traditional story, she was
born of rich and noble parents about the year 283. Her father was of Roman
origin, but his early death left her dependent upon her mother, whose name,
Eutychia, seems to indicate that she came of Greek stock. Like so many of the
early martyrs, Lucy had consecrated her virginity to God, and she hoped to
devote all her worldly goods to the service of the poor. Her mother was not so
single-minded, but an occasion offered itself when Lucy could carry out her
generous resolutions. The fame of the virgin-martyr Agatha, who had been
executed fifty-two years before in the Decian persecution, was attracting
numerous visitors to her relics at Catania, not fifty miles from Syracuse, and
many miracles had been wrought through her intercession. Eutychia was therefore
persuaded to make a pilgrimage to Catania, in the hope of being cured of a
haemorrhage, from which she had been suffering for several years. There she was
in fact cured, and Lucy, availing herself of the opportunity, persuaded her
mother to allow her to distribute a great part of her riches among the poor. The
largess stirred the greed of the unworthy youth to whom Lucy had been
unwillingly betrothed, and he denounced her to Paschasius, the Governor of
Sicily. It was in the year 303, during the fierce persecution of Diocletian. She
was first of all condemned to suffer the shame of prostitution; but in the
strength of God she stood immovable, so that they could not drag her away to the
place of shame. Bundles of wood were then heaped about her and set on fire, and
again God saved her. Finally, she met her death by the sword. But before she
died she foretold the punishment of Paschasius and the speedy termination of the
persecution, adding that Diocletian would reign no more, and Maximian would meet
his end. So, strengthened with the Bread of Life, she won her crown of virginity
and martyrdom.

This beautiful story cannot unfortunately be accepted without criticism. The
details may be only a repetition of similar accounts of a virgin martyr's life
and death. Moreover, the prophecy was not realized, if it required that Maximian
should die immediately after the termination of his reign. Paschasius, also, is
a strange name for a pagan to bear. However, since there is no other evidence by
which the story may be tested, it can only be suggested that the facts peculiar
to the saint's story deserve special notice. Among these, the place and time of
her death can hardly be questioned; for the rest, the most notable are her
connexion with St. Agatha and the miraculous cure of Eutychia, and it is to be
hoped that these have not been introduced by the pious compiler of the saint's
story or a popular instinct to link together two national saints. The story,
such as we have given it, is to be traced back to the Acta, and these probably
belong to the fifth century. Though they cannot be regarded as accurate, there
can be no doubt of the great veneration that was shown to St. Lucy by the early
church. She is one of those few female saints whose names occur in the canon of
St. Gregory, and there are special prayers and antiphons for her in his
Sacramentary and Antiphonary. She is also commemorated in the ancient Roman
Martyrology. St. Aldheim (d. 709) is the first writer who uses her Acts to give
a full account of her life and death. This he does in prose in the Tractatus de
Laudibus Virginitatis (Tract. xliii, P. L., LXXXIX, 142) and again, in verse,
in the poem De Laudibus Virginum (P. L., LXXXIX, 266). Following him, the
Venerable Bede inserts the story in his Martyrology.

With regard to her relics, Sigebert (1030-1112), a monk of Gembloux, in his
sermo de Sancta Lucia, says that he body lay undisturbed in Sicily for 400
years, before Faroald, Duke of Spoleto, captured the island and transferred the
saint's body to Corfinium in Italy. Thence it was removed by the Emperor Otho I,
972, to Metz and deposited in the church of St. Vincent. And it was from this
shrine that an arm of the saint was taken to the monastery of Luitburg in the
Diocese of Spires - an incident celebrated by Sigebert himself in verse. The
subsequent history of the relics is not clear. On their capture of
Constantinople in 1204, the French found some of the relics in that city, and
the Doge of Venice secured them for the monastery of St. George at Venice. In
the year 1513 the Venetians presented to Louis XII of France the head of the
saint, which he deposited in the cathedral church of Bourges. Another account,
however, states that the head was brought to Bourges from Rome whither it had
been transferred during the time when the relics rested in Corfinium.